The Remains of Hesiod the Ascræan, Including the Shield of Hercules / Translated into English rhyme and blank verse; with a dissertation on the life and æra, the poems and mythology of Hesiod, and copious notes.

by Hesiod

While, Ascra! midst thy vales, I fed my fold.

Plutarch in the ninth book of his Symposiacs, quotes two of the verses in illustration of the propriety of epithets: Pausanias appeals to the presentation of the branch as evidence that Hesiod did not sing to the lyre; and Lucian in his dialogue “on the illiterate book-collector” observes, “how can you have known these things without having learnt them? how or whence? unless at any time you have received a branch from the Muses like that shepherd. They, indeed, did not disdain to appear to the shepherd, though a rough hairy man, with a sun-burnt complexion; but they would never have deigned to come near you:” and in the “Dialogue with Hesiod” he banters him as promising to sing of futurity; and affecting the Chalcas or Phineas, when there is nothing of prophecy in his whole poem. An indirect argument for the spuriousness of the verses.

It must have been an impression of this proem which led Gibbon in his “Notes on the editions of the Classics” (Miscellaneous Works, vol. v.) to observe, “in the Theogony I can discern a more recent hand:” for many details in the poem have all the internal evidence of antiquity. Perhaps the catalogue of names, which Robinson superfluously defends on the score of their metrical harmony, and compares with Homer’s catalogue of ships, of which the merit is geographical and historical, may furnish a strong presumptive argument of antiquity. They would appear to have been composed at a period when alphabetic writing was unknown, and the memory of names and things depended on the technical help of oral tradition.

Pausanias says, speaking of the Theogony, “There are some who consider Hesiod as the author of this poem.” That some theogony was composed by Hesiod is evidenced by the passage in Herodotus; who, speaking of Hesiod and Homer, affirms, “these are they who framed a Theogony for the Greeks:” and the fable of Pandora in the Theogony, that we now possess, bears characteristical marks of having come from the same hand as that in the Works and Days.

Of the Shield of Hercules it is asserted by Cooke, that “there is great reason to believe this poem was not in existence in the time of Augustus:” but he merely advances, in proof of this assertion, that “Manilius, who was an author of the Augustan age, takes notice of no other than the Theogony, and the Works and Days:” yet this, if indeed anything decisive could be concluded from the omission, would only prove that he did not believe the piece authentic. He further remarks that critics should not suppose it to have formed a part of another poem, unless they could show when, where, or by whom the title had been changed. This is surely to demand a very unreasonable as well as unnecessary kind of proof. The distinct title affords, in fact, no evidence for the completeness of the poem; as we learn from Ælian, that portions of Homer’s Iliad and Odyssey were known by such separate titles as, “the Funeral Games of Patroclus,” the “Grot of Calypso;” and sung as detached pieces. The argument of Cooke that it cannot be an imitation of the Shield of Achilles, because the description of the mere Shield occupies but a small part of the piece, is equivalent to contending that Virgil could not have imitated the simile of Diana in the first book of the Æneid from the Odyssey, because the rest of the book bears no resemblance to any thing in Homer. A slight presumption of the Shield being from the hand of Hesiod may be founded on a quotation of Polybius, from one of Hesiod’s lost works: the historian speaks of the Macedonians as being “such as Hesiod describes the Æacidæ; rejoicing in war rather than in the banquet:” book v. ch. i. In the Shield, Iölaus says of himself and Hercules, that battles “are better to them than a feast.” The expression, however, may have been proverbial, and used by more poets than one.

The poem is ascribed to Hesiod by Athenæus: but Aristophanes the grammarian rejected it as spurious, and Longinus speaks doubtingly of Hesiod being the author. Tanaquil Faber confidently asserts “that they who think the Shield not of Hesiod, have but a very superficial acquaintance with Grecian poetry:” and on the other side Joseph Scaliger speaks of the author, whoever he may be, of the Shield; which the critical world by a preposterous judgment have attributed to the poet of Ascra. It is not by a reference to authorities that the question must be decided, but by an examination of the interior structure of the poem, and the evidence of style.

The objections to a great part of the poem consist in its unlikeness to the style of Hesiod, and its resemblance to that of Homer.

Robinson insists in reply that it is very usual for the same author to show a diversity of style; which is at least an admission that Hesiod is here different from himself. But to his question “whether we demand the same fervour and force in the Georgics of Virgil as in the Æneid?” it may be asked in return whether a certain similarity of style be not clearly distinguishable in these poems, however distinct their nature? there is, indeed, a difference, but not absolutely a discordance.

The whole laboured argument which he has bestowed on the necessary dissimilarity of didactic and heroical composition is plainly foreign to the question. Who would dream of urging as an objection to its authenticity, that the style of “The Shield” is unlike the georgical style of Hesiod? the objection is, that it is unlike his epic style: and Robinson has brought the question to a fair issue by his remark that the Battle of the Gods abounds no less than the Shield with the ornaments of poetry.

It is not sufficient that these passages respectively display ornament; we must examine whether they display a similar style of ornament. Now the descriptive part of the Shield is in a gorgeous taste; unlike the bold and simple majesty of the Theogony. There is a visible effort to surprise by something marvellous and uncommon; which often verges on conceit and extravagance. For sublime images we are presented with gigantic and distorted figures, and with hideous conceptions of disgusting horror. There is indeed a considerable degree of genius even in these faulty passages: but whoever perceives a resemblance in the imagery of the Shield to that of the Titanic War, may equally trace an affinity between Virgil and Ariosto.